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The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

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Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#21

Post by libertymcateer »

FrankenPC wrote: post #15
libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

You haven't heard of Law 2.0. The slow rise to financial dominance is coming to an end for the big Amlaw firms. A disruption event is on the horizon where lawyers will need to be replaced with technology/law expert hybrids who will program the legal systems which will act autonomously with as little intervention as possible. Hands on law will eventually become a thing of the past. I've been working in legal for 25 ye…

I genuinely cannot tell if you are trolling.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#22

Post by LandoCalrissian »

FrankenPC wrote: post #15
libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

You haven't heard of Law 2.0. The slow rise to financial dominance is coming to an end for the big Amlaw firms. A disruption event is on the horizon where lawyers will need to be replaced with technology/law expert hybrids who will program the legal systems which will act autonomously with as little intervention as possible. Hands on law will eventually become a thing of the past. I've been working in legal for 25 ye…

Is this some crazy manifesto, or do you actually believe this?

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#23

Post by libertymcateer »

LandoCalrissian wrote: post #22
FrankenPC wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't heard of Law 2.0. The slow rise to financial dominance is coming to an end for the big Amlaw firms. A disruption event is on the horizon where lawyers will need to be replaced with technology/law expert hybrids who will program the legal systems which will act autonomously with as little intervention as possible. Hands on law will eventually become a thing of the past. I've been working in legal for 25 ye…

Is this some crazy manifesto, or do you actually believe this?

It sounds like a tech-crunch article on legaltech run through a markov chain.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#24

Post by _rpd »

libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

> Whether the conditions in a contract have been met is very often a matter of huge debate - this is what "law suits" are about.

Exactly. While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem. Not to say we won't solve AGI or important parts of automated legal dispute resolution, but the blockchain and even blockchain-based distributed computing is incidental.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#25

Post by geodel »

libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

All excellent points. I wonder if it fall in some 80/20 rule. 80% contracts may be bog standard and ripe for this kind of automation while remaining will get attention of staff. I am thinking of contracts for jobs, lease, repair works etc.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#27

Post by libertymcateer »

_rpd wrote: post #24
libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

> Whether the conditions in a contract have been met is very often a matter of huge debate - this is what "law suits" are about. Exactly. While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem. Not to say we won't solve AGI or important parts of automated legal dispute resolution, but the blockchain and even blockchain-based distributed computing is incidental.

> While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem.

Beautiful way of putting it.

I want to take it one step further, however:

While laws and contracts are written for human consumption this will be a problem. In the same way that DRM is always going to have to allow for users to view video with analog eyeballs and hear sound with analog ears, if laws and contracts are to be sensible to humans, they must be written in something a lot like normal language. I always argue that legalese is something more than normal language, but the point is that even in this stance, the interpreter is still a human being with semantic judgment faculties, and not a compiler or run-time interpreter.

You know why I do not anticipate that this will ever come to pass? The people in power that write laws and enforce contracts are human beings.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#28

Post by asciimo »

sanswork wrote: post #8

Every time I see someone claiming that no one thought the internet would succeed by pointing out that newsweek article I wonder if they are even old enough to remember the mid 90s. I get that it would be regional but in the Toronto area in the mid-90s everyone I knew wanted to try the web and email it was often just expensive or a pain in the ass to do so. Having scanned through the article they basically point out w…

I agree that there are plenty of differences between the technologies. But the investment comparison in the article seems accurate; a public Internet can be traced back before the 80s, and "early development" to the 60s. A public blockchain opened in 2009. Wasn't VC investment in the former comparatively late?

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#29

Post by [deleted] »

elastic_church wrote: post #20
FrankenPC wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't heard of Law 2.0. The slow rise to financial dominance is coming to an end for the big Amlaw firms. A disruption event is on the horizon where lawyers will need to be replaced with technology/law expert hybrids who will program the legal systems which will act autonomously with as little intervention as possible. Hands on law will eventually become a thing of the past. I've been working in legal for 25 ye…

Where is this happening As an individual if I want a lawyer for anything right now, I am most likely going to wind up with a complete technophobe who is barely computer literate enough to copy and paste the boilerplate legal document they make for me.

[deleted]

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#30

Post by andrewla »

libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

I am a big fan of cryptocurrency, but completely agree with you about smart contracts.

From a legal perspective, as you point out, they are ridiculous, because they can't encode legally "interesting" contracts.

Many people seem to think that smart contracts can be used to replace more economic-oriented contacts, like "paying dividends to shareholders". Unfortunately here they are also useless -- the only contracts you can effectively have are zero-sum contracts; you can't have an unfunded future obligation.

Even the most basic of financial contracts, like "I'll give you $500 now and you give me $50 a month for the next 12 months", can't be effectively encoded unless I (the debtor) has $600 at the time of the issuance of the contract, so why am I taking a loan for $500? The best you can do is create a certain class of non-deliverable futures, but in the process, tying up the funds until the contract matures, and essentially preventing the use of credit in the process, which makes them useless except for toy applications.

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